NOTE!: Please read "Operations Staff Docs" first if you have
not already. This document assumes that you have read it. This document
only covers the "Printers", "Multiserver Control", and "Admin" menu sections.
"Operations Staff Docs" covers the "Jobs/Queues" section.

The following is a description of how to add,
modify, and delete printers via the phpPrintAdmin system.

There are some important terms and concepts that must be
clear for the sake of this discussion, though.

There are three basic components to any enterprise printing
environment: The client(s) that is printing a job, the print server(s) that is
managing jobs, and the printer(s) that is printing the job.

phpPrintAdmin allows for the management of jobs and
printers in a centralized manner. A central database on the primary server
(atlas) stores all the relevant information about all the printers in the
organization. Based on this database, configuration files for each print server
at each office are created and delivered to them when needed.

As an administrator, you can add/delete/modify printers, as
well as manage and view jobs on the servers.

This document is intended for those that already have an
understanding of print servers, queues, jobs, and so forth.

When performing the operations described below, the first
screen will typically be a "selection" screen, in which you are asked to give
some criteria to generate a list of printers to select from for performing an
operation on. This is necessitated by the large number of printers in the
printers database.

To select a printer, simply enter some search
term in the text box provided. This search term can be a filter by either
printer name, ip address, or device model. Additionally, you can further filter
the list by only listing printers from a certain server – hence, the "server"dropdown menu. The
"fuzzy/exact" option will determine the search string type –
whether only to find "exact" matches for the string, or to return all matches
that contain the string ("fuzzy").

In the
"view printers" screen, there is the
additional option of selecting what kinds of information you want to see about a
printer. That’s what the checkboxes at the bottom are. This is only in the "view
printers" section since most of these types of information are intended to be
read-only, and therefore "viewed only"(not modified). Please note that some
printer database entries may not have all of this information available, and may
result in a blank returned entry.

To add a printer or plotter, you must first
determine some information about it. The most important pieces of information
are the following:

Printer Name

Printer IP Address (must be statically assigned!)

Printer Model (e.g. HP 5Si, HP 8100)

Printer’s Local Server

If the printer is a plotter or not

With this information in hand, go
to
http://atlas/pa, and log in as an administrator. See the "user
administration" section for a clarification of what administrators, operators,
and guests are.

Once logged in, click on "add
printer"under the printer section. If you don’t see the add printer option,
then you’re not logged in as an administrator.

Enter the appropriate fields in.
If the printer model is not in the drop-down list, please contact
tom.klopf@mms.gov to make arrangements to add this printer model to the
database.

VERY IMPORTANT : If you are
setting up a plotter, set the "filtered" option to "no". By setting "no" for
filtering, there will be no filtering of Unix jobs before they are sent to the
plotter.

You may be wondering what the
"Local Print Server"option is. In this option, choose the print server that is "local"to the printer itself. In other words, if the printer is in Camarillo,
then the local server is "calprint".

After that, click on any other
print servers at remote locations that you want the printer to be visible at, as
well. For example, if you want to allow people at the New Orleans office to
print to your printer in California, you would click on "atlas", which is the
local server in New Orleans. By doing this, atlas will have an entry for the
printer after you do a "sync".

VERY IMPORTANT: You MUST
choose whether the device is a printer or plotter from the drop down on the
right – this is important for the generation of Unix configuration files at the
time of synchronization. If you’re not sure of this, you can say "printer"for
the time being.

After entering the information, click on
"add
printer". A message screen with some logging information will appear. If
everything went okay, the last line of this screen should say something like:

Printer: your_printer added

Now you must perform a sync to update the remote servers
with the new information. Please follow the instructions in the section called
"How to Synchronize the Servers"for syncing servers, and then proceed with
these directions.

After you have done the synchronization, the printer should
now be added as a Unix print queue to your local print server. Samba should also
display this added printer via a Windows browsing window. The printer is
fully set up, with one exception: The Windows driver.

The final step is to associate/install the appropriate
Windows driver with the printer. This must be done via a Windows NT
workstation. Additionally, you must be set up as a "printer admin"on the Samba
server. If you have not been set up as an administrator, please contact
tom.klopf@mms.gov to have this arranged.

Browse to the print server via the "run"command. For example,
if your print server name is "calprint", enter
\\calprint at the prompt to browse there.

A list of printers should appear. At the end of this list
should be a folder icon labeled "printers". Server settings for printers can
be modified in this folder. Double click on it. A nearly identical listing of
printers should appear, and your new printer should appear as well, so long as
the synchronization worked okay.

Right click on your new printer, and select "properties".
There should be no driver associated with it, so an error message should be
displayed indicating that a driver has not been installed for the printer, and
asks if you want to install one. Counter-intuitively, click on "no". A
properties window should now appear for the printer.

Click on the "advanced"tab. Among the items listed, there
should be a drop-down called "driver". First, see if the server has the driver
you need for the printer already installed. If it does, select it, and then
press okay.

IF the printer driver is not installed, click on "New
Driver…"in the same window. A driver installation wizard will appear – follow
the directions there for installing the driver to the server.

Once the driver is installed, press "apply". You need to
also set the driver settings for this particular printer. Click on the "device
settings"to set the appropriate settings for the printer. For example, if the
printer supports duplex printing, you would indicate something like this under
the "device settings"window. You can also indicate printing defaults for the
printer, which are defaults the clients will have when they get the driver
information from the print server.

After setting the settings you want, click on "okay". The
window should disappear, leaving the list of printers on the server. Close this
as well.

That’s it! If everything went okay, your printer should now
be available to both Unix and Windows clients. Please contact
tom.klopf@mms.gov if you have any problems, questions, or suggestions.
Please bear in mind that phpPrintAdmin will change over time, with the intent of
shortening the steps involved in adding, modifying, and deleting printers. Stay
tuned!

If have not read the section entitled
"Adding a Printer", please do so before continuing.

To modify a printer, first answer the question:
"Am I modifying this printer for Unix clients or Windows clients". Read the
appropriate section for an answer.

Modifying a printer for Unix clients

First, log in as an admin into
http://atlas/pa. Select "modify printer". After finding your printer from
the list you make, a page will appear similar to the "add printer"screen,
except that some values are already in place. These are the current values for
the printer. Make the changes you want to make, click on "modify printer". This
will update the printer database, but you must then do a server synchronization
for the change to propagate to the servers themselves. See the section entitled
""for information on how to synchronize the servers. Once this is done, your
changes should have been made.

Modifying a printer for Windows Clients

The only modifications that are exclusive to Windows clients is the Windows
driver information for a printer. If you need to perform operations such as
changing a printer’s IP address, or it’s name, then use the steps in "Modifying
a printer for Unix clients". Changes done in
here will propagate to the Windows clients, as well.

If you need to change a windows driver or it’s settings, though, you need to use
a Windows NT/2000 workstation as a printer admin to make these changes.
Essentially, just follow the steps for adding a windows driver in the section "Adding the Printer Driver(s)
for Windows clients", but apply these steps to the printer in question.

Deleting a printer is probably the simplest operation.
Simply click on "delete printer", select a printer from the list you have
generated, and then click "submit query". A message should be returned
indicating that the printer was deleted.

Afterwards, you must do a server sync to propagate the
changes to the print server(s).

If you have already set up a printer, and wish to make it
available to other offices, then this is the option you want. You MUST have
already set up the printer, though.

Click on
"add/modify remote queues", and select
a printer with some search criteria. A list will come up of available remote
servers to add the printer to. If the remote server already has an entry for the
printer, then the checkbox for that server will be checked. You can
check/uncheck servers you wish the printer to be visible at, and then click "modify printer".

Do a server sync to propagate the changes to the servers,
and everything is complete.

When any operation is done modifying the
printer database, a synchronization must be done to "push" these changes out to
the printer server(s). Why do this manually? Because it’s important for the
user to know when these changes are happening.

The synchronization reads the current printer
database and generates print server configuration files based on it. For
example, it creates a printcap (used by LPRng) and a printers.conf (used by
Solaris printing commands). After creating a custom set of configuration files
for each print server, each server is notified that new files are available for
them on the primary server. Within a minute, the servers should copy the new
files to themselves, and reread them into LPD and Samba.

Synchronizing the servers is easy – just
click on "initiate sync"in the menu on the primary server. A screen will come
up asking for a confirmation of the sync. Click on "sync servers", and the sync
will commence. Various logging messages will appear showing the progress of the
sync. If everything goes well, you should see some (albeit cryptic) messages
indicating that the configuration files were generated and that the remote
servers were notified. Within about one minute, the remote servers should
silently download their config files and everything should be in place.

You can and should check that these settings
propagated to the servers by doing a check via Windows or a Unix prompt
(depending on the changes you made). For example, if you’re adding a new
printer, do a "lpq –Pyour_printer"on the local server to see that the new
printer has been added as a Unix queue.